What is your personal brand? And how are you letting the world know about it?
Those are the questions that Dan Schawbel (who I interviewed for my recent Reuters piece on returns on social media marketing) started asking a few years ago. In 2007, he wrote a book called Me 2.0 to bring the concept of personal branding to a broader audience. The revised version of the book is out today.
It is because of Dan that I Googled my children’s potential names before I named them. I have also realized that while a name like “Vanderkam” was annoying as a kid, in the Google era it is great. It’s not very hard to rise to the top of the results!
I don’t think marketing will ever be a core competency for me, but in this free agent era, it’s something we all need to think about. Dan gives a primer on this mindset, and some tips for job hunting when sending your resume through job sites is the equivalent of throwing it in the trash.